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Sahil Verma
Sahil Verma

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Use Multiple GitHub Accounts on same machine with SSH

#github #ssh #git #programming

Learn how to manage multiple GitHub accounts on the same machine using SSH keys and SSH config.

1. Generate a new SSH key for each GitHub account 

# For personal account ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "your-personal-email@example.com" -f ~/.ssh/id_ed25519_personal # For work account ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "your-work-email@example.com" -f ~/.ssh/id_ed25519_work
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2. Add keys to the SSH agent 

eval "$(ssh-agent -s)" ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_ed25519_personal ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_ed25519_work
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3. Add public keys to GitHub

Go to GitHub → Settings → SSH and GPG Keys for each account and add:

cat ~/.ssh/id_ed25519_personal.pub cat ~/.ssh/id_ed25519_work.pub
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4. Create or edit SSH config 

nano ~/.ssh/config # code ~/.ssh/config to open on vs code
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Add this:

# Personal GitHub Host github-personal HostName github.com User git IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_ed25519_personal # Work GitHub Host github-work HostName github.com User git IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_ed25519_work
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5. Use correct GitHub alias when cloning 

# Personal repo git clone git@github-personal:username/repo.git # Work repo git clone git@github-work:work-username/repo.git
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6. Set Git identity per project 

# Inside personal repo git config user.name "Your Personal Name" git config user.email "your-personal-email@example.com" # Inside work repo git config user.name "Your Work Name" git config user.email "your-work-email@example.com"
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You can now work with multiple GitHub accounts on the same machine without conflicts.

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